If it is true that it takes all kinds of folks to make a world, Magpie Simpkins was a specimen without a parallel. He’d take a chance on anything from soda-water to stocks, and his head was a regular greenhouse of fool ideas.

He’s so tall that any one would bet he had seventeen more vertebræ than the average man, and to hear him talk you’d think his family name was Knowledge. I’m Ike Harper, and I’ve been a suffering pardner to this long, gun-packing cross between a walking argument and a psychologist for years and years, and while I don’t change much in looks I’m breaking down internally at an alarming rate.

This day me and Magpie are setting in our cabin on Plenty Stone Creek with Tellurium Woods, and Magpie has got his long nose stuck deep into an old magazine.

Tellurium Woods is worth a passing mention. He’s anti everything except “Have a drink?” when he’s open to conviction. He’s about five feet six inches in height, and about the same in diameter, and uses a flannel rag instead of a comb. He’s got a claim on the creek above ours, neither of which show anything except recent labor. He ain’t partial to games of chance—carrying his own marked deck and loaded dice, and pines for a cinch bet.

Magpie lays the magazine down on the table, while he rolls a cigaret, and I can see that he’s found food for thought. I sighs to myself. I know the symptoms. After the smoke is trailing up past his long nose, he turns to me and Tellurium, and snorts:

“Pshaw! They make a fuss about something that anybody could do just as well, and maybe I could do it a lot better.”

“What bank got robbed this time, Magpie?” inquires Tellurium.

Magpie looks at Tellurium, sad-like, and shakes his head—

“No wonder your hair don’t show no animation, Tellurium.”

And then he goes on reading.

“Well, you don’t need to keep it a secret, Magpie,” I reminds him.

“It says here,” says he, turning a few pages, “it says here that a feller went out into the woods, without no clothes on, and without no weapons but his bare hands, and stayed thirty days, when he comes back healthy and clothed in skins. ‘Next to Nature,’ they calls it. By cripes, a magazine must be hard up for stuff to write about!”

“Pretty hard thing to do at that,” states Tellurium. “I takes off my hat to any man what can pull that stunt.”

“Hard!” snorts Magpie, “you call that hard? That’s a cinch for a he man.”

“Exactly,” agrees Tellurium, “that’s why me and you ought to take off our hats to him. We couldn’t do it, Magpie.”

“Couldn’t, eh? You couldn’t, Mr. Woods—that’s a cinch.”

“Neither could you, Mr. Simpkins, which makes it a double-rig.”

“The —— I couldn’t! Bet you forty dollars I could.”

“See you, Magpie, and raise you forty more.”

Magpie turns to me—

“Ike, how much money you got?”

“Just enough for me to get both hands around it and hang on,” says I. “Tellurium is betting on a cinch or he wouldn’t bet, so you might as well back up, Magpie.”

“Thanks, Ike,” says he. “We’ll make that for a hundred, Tellurium. I’ll get a pencil and write out the articles of agreement.”

“How much you got, Magpie?” I asks.

“Forty-three dollars.”

What can you do with a person like that? I had fifty-seven dollars before them two fool-hens got to betting, and when things are settled I ain’t got nothing but a receipt, which ain’t honored in no place where they sells things.

The agreement reads something like this:

To Whom It May Concern:

It is this day agreed that Magpie Simpkins, party of the first part, bets Tellurium Woods, party of the hind part, one hundred dollars that he can go out into the woods and live for thirty days: starting out from a designated spot, with no clothes and no weapons.

The party of the first part agrees to come back in good health, nourished from the bosom of nature, and it is further agreed that the said Magpie Simpkins, Tellurium Woods and Ike Harper, stakeholder, and party of minor interest shall, do and hereby agree not to tell a darn soul of the bet, and in case the parties of the first part or parties of the hind part break this agreement they shall forfeit their half of the bet, and in case Ike tells he shall lose the money he loaned to the party of the first part.

We all signed it. They wanted me to hold up my right hand, and swear that I’ll keep my mouth shut, but I said:

“If you think I’m going to sign that article and then tell anybody, you’re crazy. I expect to lose the money, but I don’t give my coin to no dealer before I get a look at the cards.”

The next day Magpie went back to Nature. He limped off into the woods, up in the Medicine Hills, and I’ll bet that Nature, if she saw him coming, was ashamed of her handiwork.

The next morning I’m there on the sunny side of our cabin, when I sees a caravan coming up the trail. There’s something about this group of human beings that reminds me of something I’ve seen before, and when they gets a little closer, I says to me—

“Ike, there’s Professor Phinney, or you’re a wall-eyed pike!”

It sure was that same identical old pelican, with his shiny, hard hat on his head, and them same crêpe-rimmed specs dangling on his skinny nose. His knees interfere with the burro’s ear action, and his coattails makes a hy-iu drape for the rear end of the critter.

Behind him comes Mrs. Professor, fatter and more painful than ever, and behind her is another lady, who is strange to me. Just then a burro tops the rise, and I sees Doctor Doolittle. Yes, sir, here comes that doctor, knee-breeches and all, and so far as I can see he ain’t changed none at all. Just as fat and red-faced as ever, and across in front of him, almost covered with his stummick, is that same shotgun that he hopes some day to kill something with.

They pilgrims up and the professor squints at me over his specs.

“How—er—do you do,” says he. “Is that you, Mr. Harper?”

“I’ll have to admit it, old-timer,” says I, uncoiling myself from the chair, and shaking hands with him.

Doc falls off his steed, and waddles up to shake hands, too.

“Ike,” pants the doctor, “I’m glad to see you. Ah-h-h-h! How are you?”

“Reasonable, Doc,” says I. “Howdy, Mrs. Phinney. How are you?”

“Unreasonable!” snaps the professor, before the old lady can open her mouth. “She’s done nothing but complain all the way. Meet my daughter Angeline. This is her first trip of this kind.”

“And her last!” snorts the old lady. “Your theories will be the death of both of us. It’s the most foolish undertaking I ever heard of, Wallace. Absolutely the most foolish thing on earth!”

“I don’t mind the trip, mother,” states Angeline, in the voice of a medder lark. “I rather love it, don’t you know?”

“I know,” says I. “Is this the end of your journey, folks, or do you intend to pilgrim on?”

“We terminate here,” says the professor.

“We will be with you for some little time. Is Mr. Simpkins at home?”

“Magpie,” corrects the doctor. “I called him Mr. Simpkins, and he got indignant. I like him—so unconventional and quaint.”

“Magpie,” says I, reaching deep into my soul for an alibi, “Magpie is dead.”

“Dead?” squeaks the professor. “Dead? Well, well!”

“I’m so sorry,” says the old lady, acting almost human. “So sorry. It must be awful hard for you.”

“Yes’m. Almost impossible.”

“Magpie is dead,” wonders the doctor. “From what cause?”

“Nature took him unto its own,” says I, removing my hat. “You—er—might say that natural history took him unto its own.”

“Exactly,” agrees the professor. “Just how?”

“Met a grizzly bear,” says I. “Never met before.”

“Must have been sudden,” says the old lady.

“Yes’m, I’d say it was quick.”

“Oh!” exclaims the doctor. “Grizzly bear?”

“I told you we’d have them to contend with,” argues the professor. “Even with grizzlies abroad it will merely lend zest to the experiment.”

“Zest!” yelps the old lady. “Experiment! Did you ever in your life hear of such a thing, Mr. Harper? The professor, supposedly a learned man, and the doctor, also of supposedly human intelligence, have come out here to prove the theory that a man can live a whole month in the woods, without clothes or weapons or food, except such as they can snatch from nature. Did you ever hear of such a thing? Isn’t it the most absurd thing on earth?”

I backed against the cabin and stared at that outfit.

“You see!” cackled the old lady, “he’s thunderstruck to think that intelligent men would think of such a thing.”

“It—er—has been done,” states the professor, and the doctor nods and pats himself on the chest.

“It can be done again, too,” states he.

“For me it will remove superfluous adipose tissue, and for the professor it will be the means of bringing back the vigor of youth, and perhaps a little flesh. What do you think, Mr. Harper?”

“Think? I don’t never attempt it, Doctor—especially in the presence of learned men. I’m a darn fool, and I’m proud of it. I just know enough to keep my clothes on and eat off a table. When do you fellers intend to go back to the Cave Age?”

“Tomorrow,” says the professor. “We are both anxious to try out the theory. Today we will fix things so the ladies will be comfortable—if you don’t mind having them around here for a while—and tomorrow we will enter the forest in quest of adventure and health.”

What could I do? They say that lightning don’t hit twice in the same place, but this bolt did. I gives the ladies the cabin, and moves my blankets out under a tree. Tellurium comes shuffling along a little later, and stops to look the outfit over. The professor is setting there on the steps, and Tellurium sizes him up.

“Ike,” says he, “what in —— is that?”

“Not so loud!” I cautions him. “That person which you designate as a ‘thing’ is Magpie’s father.”

“Magpie’s father! My gosh, I never knew—well, huh! Magpie favors him a heap, Ike.”

Tellurium walks over to the professor and holds out his hand.

“Pleased to meet you,” says he. “Surprised and pleased. I’ve knowed the boy for a long time, and while he’s a bit long on arguments and fool ideas, I welcome his ancestor. He’s got your nose and legs. I reckon you’re proud of him.”

“Yeaus,” drawls the professor, squinting up at Tellurium. “Yeaus. Just who do you refer to?”

“Magpie.”

“Ah! Yeaus, too bad. I feel sorry for him.”

“Well,” says Tellurium, hitching up his belt, “after taking a comprehensive look I agree that he’s to be pitied. He’s too old to outgrow it now.”

Tellurium grins at me, and pilgrims away.

“That—er—party must be a bit off his mind,” remarks the professor. “Do people outgrow deaths from grizzly bears?”

“Not this summer,” says I. “That’s one of Magpie’s closest friends, and when Magpie passed out it affected his brain.”

“He must have been a close friend,” agrees the old pelican.

“Close?” says I. “Say, he’s so close that one day he let a train run over a nickel so he could pass it on Wick Smith for two-bits’ worth of beans.”

“Exactly,” agrees the professor. “He was Damon to Magpie’s Pythias.”

What can you do with a person like that? There ain’t no open season, and they don’t class as varmints, so you just got to suffer them to live. The professor has loads of brains and no sense. The doctor grins at me, and tried to wink. It must be awful to have a face so fat that you have to register extreme pain in order to wink.

The next day them two hombres turns themselves loose. I takes them way over into the heavy timber, and brings their clothes back with me. They has quite a heated argument as to whether the professor shall or shall not retain his shoes, but they finally decides that on account of his bunions he shall be permitted to wear them, and the cloth things he covers them with. The doctor insists that so long as the professor concedes himself a pair of shoes, he’ll allow himself to retain a few feet of twine string and a bent pin to catch trout with. I sets there and suffers internal troubles until they gets things settled, and pilgrims off into the jungle.

Man, it was a sight! Nothing on earth was ever funnier than to see a fat man, minus his clothes, picking his steps into the timber, with one hand held out in front of him, dangling a twine string, while behind him comes an animated hat-rack, the upper part of his body clothed in crêpe-rimmed specs, and the lower half in a pair of shoes with gray cloth blankets over same.

The old lady sure read the riot act to me when I got back. She seemed to think that I ought to have talked them out of it. Fine chance, after they comes a thousand miles to try it out.

“Grizzly bears will get them!” she wails.

“Yes’m,” says I, “I wouldn’t put it past a grizzly. Cheer up, though, ’cause the wolves may beat the bear to it.”

“Wolves!” she whoops. “Is there wolves here, too?”

“Flocks of them, ma’am. Highbehinds, suspender snakes and wild-trout-hounds. This country is overwhelmed with animal life.”

Them two ladies gets real worked up over it, and are arguing about calling for the police, when in comes “Mighty” Jones and his coyote pack. Mighty is one of these alleged human beings who get a hobby and ride it to death.

His last obsession was wolf-hounds, and he sure acquires some pack. There’s everything in it from a water spaniel to a St. Bernard. Seven alleged fox-hounds furnishes the trailing, and the rest just sort of form a mob. He rides up and admires the ladies, and then I introduce him.

“I never knew that fox hunting had advanced this far West,” says Miss Angeline, trying to keep a spaniel from gnawing her shoelace and a greyhound from licking her ear at the same time.

“Yes’m,” says Mighty. “Foxes ain’t so much beside what I’ve been after today. Ike, did you ever see a wild man?”

“Not lately. I never did see them as a regular thing. Why, Mighty?”

“I been chasing one for three hours. Honest to gosh! Wore out my horse and all my dogs. Where is Magpie?”

“Wild man!” I snorts. “You better quit drinking.”

“Ain’t had a drink for a week. Where’s Magpie?”

“There ain’t no wild man,” I argues. “Must have been a bear.”

“Don’t you reckon I know a bear from a man? Magpie at home?”

“He—he’s dead. Didn’t you hear about it?” informs and inquires the old lady.

“Dead? Magpie ain’t dead.”

“Yes, he is,” insists the old lady. “Ate up by a grizzly.”

I’ll bet that old lady was some gossip pedler in her own town, ’cause she seemed to get a lot of pleasure out of telling the bad news to Mighty.

“Aw!” says Mighty. “Aw. Is that right, Ike?”

“You’re questioning the lady’s veracity, Mighty,” says I.

“Did you see the bear kill him, Ike?” he asks.

I shakes my head, and the old lady chips in—

“Mr. Harper knows that it did just the same.”

Mighty picks up his reins and whistles for his dogs—

“Well,” says he, “there’s something queer about it, if you asks me.”

And then he rides off down the trail.

“That’s the worst of it,” says I. “When a person gets killed, you’ll always find some nosey person what wants proof. Grizzly bears don’t leave nothing to prove it by.”

“How do you know a bear killed him?” asks Miss Angeline.

“Well,” says I, sparring for time, “that’s easy. A grizzly always—do you know anything about grizzly bears, ma’am? You don’t? Well, that makes it easier. When a grizzly makes a kill he always brays four times in a row. Sabe? Sort of a final Keno. I heard one bray the required number of times just after Magpie left.”

“How utterly appalling,” wails Miss Angeline, “and didn’t you go to his rescue?”

“No, ma’am! It’s too late to even go to his funeral. Everything is over or inside by that time. All I could do would be to swell the list of dead or injured, so I keeps away.”

“Heavens above!” wails the old lady. “And this is what is coming to my poor darling Wallie and dear Doctor Doolittle. Oh, why do men do things like this?”

“Search me,” says I, and just then the old lady cuts loose a real howl, and grabs herself by the earrings.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!” she yelps, running the scale with her voice. “Oh, I forgot the wild man! He’s over there with father and the doctor!”

“He may be over there, ma’am,” says I, consoling-like, “but not with them. He ain’t that wild.”

That night they barricaded that cabin door until it would take a ton of dynamite to open it from the outside. They holds open prayer-meeting in favor of the professor and doctor, saying a few words for the mangled soul of Magpie Simpkins—they called him Simpson, and winds up with a few words in regards to softening the natural proclivities of local grizzly bears.

I’d almost slip into sin and deception to be prayed for by Miss Angeline. It’s along about ten o’clock. I’m laying there in my blankets, smoking a cigaret, when I hears footsteps approaching, and I sees the outline of Tellurium Woods. I whistles to him, and he comes over and sets down with me.

“Ike,” says he, “I just come over to tell you that Magpie has busted his agreement to the extent that he ain’t depending on nature for all his nourishment.”

“If that’s all he’s busted he’s lucky,” says I. “Mighty Jones’ pack of dogs has chased him all day.”

Tellurium lets this information percolate for a while, and then he says:

“Pshaw! I don’t reckon them hounds are much good. I made a pie today, Ike. Honest to gosh, apple pie! Left her outside to cool, while I goes out to try and catch some fish for supper, and when I gets back she’s gone. A blanket is also gone from where I leaves her on a stump.

“I just come down to explain about that pie, Ike. It ain’t exactly a digestible piece of food. That ornery Piegan, Runs-With-a-Wolf, has been pilfering from me lately. He picks up everything he can lay his hands on, so I bakes this pie to teach him a lesson. There’s a few apples in it, Ike, but there’s a danged lot of quinine, ipecac and cayenne pepper. She’s guaranteed to cure colds, empty a stubborn stummick and warm you to the bone. I know that Injun didn’t get her, ’cause he’s visiting down at the reservation.”

Just then a burro starts singing his little song, and before he gets through the first verse another one gives him his audible support. Me and Tellurium don’t pay no attention, being used to the song of the Rocky Mountain canary, but from the cabin comes a long, loud wail, and here comes two white-robed figures. They’ve got their arms around each other, and the old lady yells:

“Mr. Harper! Oh-h-h-h! Mr. Harper! They’re gone! They’re gone!”

“Yes’m,” says I. “They’ve got nerve to stay this long. Better go back to bed before you catch cold.”

“Heartless creature!” wails the old lady. “Why don’t you do something? Isn’t there anything you can do? Oh, my poor Wallie!”

“Who’s Wallie?” asks Tellurium, in a whisper.

“He’s a nut,” says I truthfully, and then I turns to the ladies: “Just what do you want me to do? Also I’d love to know what in thunder is the matter with you two. What you got—toothache, earache or stummickache?”

“They’re gone, I tell you!” howls the old lady, while Angeline sets down on the ground and hangs on to the old lady’s knees, like a picture I saw once of an angel hanging on to a rock.

“The grizzly brayed eight times!” sobs Miss Angeline, and I begins to see a light.

“Good night!” snorts Tellurium. “I feels that I’m hors de compact in a community where grizzly bears pick up the habits of a jackass,” and he pikes off in the dark.

I manages to get them females back into the cabin, after promising to go and see what the grizzly left. I went back after a while and told them to rest easy, ’cause all the grizzly killed was a couple of elk.

“The—the doctor is an Elk,” says Miss Angeline.

“Not this kind,” says I. “This kind wears the teeth in their mouth.” The next morning I leaves the females cleaning out the cabin while I takes my bronc and goes scouting. I swings around the head of Sillman Gulch on to Injun Creek. I ties my bronc and moseys down to the creek to see what I can discover.

After a while I pokes out on to a nice bare spot above the creek, and sets down to take a smoke. At first I don’t see a thing, but after a while I sees something move across the creek, and when I gets my eyes set right I sees Magpie Simpkins. He’s laying flat behind a log and seems to be interested in something below him. I sneaks up to where I can get a better view, and right below me is the doctor and professor.

It sure is a scene from nature. Down there, humped up on a rock, with a blanket draped over his shoulders is the professor, busy picking thorns out of his legs. On a lodge-pole, which is bridging the creek, crouches the doctor, both legs wrapped around the pole, and hanging on with one hand, while he angles with the other.

Sudden-like he yanks up with the string, and out flips a small trout, but before the doctor can swing it to shore it falls off his bent pin. I’m only a short distance above them, so I can see fine, and hear ’most everything they say.

Sudden-like I sees Magpie again. He’s sneaking up behind the professor’s rock, and he’s some snaky individual. Pretty soon he wiggles up close, takes something, and then backs up until he’s into the brush again.

“The plot begins to congeal,” says I to myself.

The doctor snags another fish, with the same result. The professor shakes his head, sad-like, and yells—

“Never mind, they won’t stay hooked.”

“This is Friday!” yells the doctor. “We’ve got to have fish with our pie,” and keeps right on angling.

I looks around for Magpie, and I sees him sneak across the creek below me, and Injun up my side. I reckon he’s pining to get a look at the features of them naturals, and has got to circle to do it. I rolls behind a bush and waits for him. He sneaks out, all humped over, with that pie under his arm, and his skin area bears proof that he’s been going through brush regardless. He looks like a smallpox patient that had been curry-combed. He squats down and peers at them two below, and scratches his head.

“Well, I’ll be ——!” he snorts. “Dog-gone, it can’t be!” and then he looks at the pie beside him, and nods.

He breaks that pie in two, and seems a heap interested in something he finds. I reckon he ain’t been eating none too good off nature, ’cause he goes into that pie like a steam shovel into mud.

He masticates slower and slower, and an expression of pain comes across his face. He looks at the piece of pie in his hand, and then lays it tenderly into the tin. He spat out that mouthful of pie, along with a cuss word that would gladden the heart of a professional mule-skinner, and then gathers up tin and all and peers over the bank.

Swish! He sails that pan far out over the creek, and to the left of the professor. It cuts a beautiful circle to the left, turns over and dips to the right, and completes a shot that Magpie or no other man could do again in a lifetime. It hit the professor slap in the chest and knocked him off the rock. The pie must have been soggy to make it hold to the tin thataway, and when it hit it busted like shrapnel.

Yar-o-o-o-o! Yar-o-o-o-o-o! comes a howling up the creek, and down through the timber comes Mighty Jones’ pack of hounds.

Magpie just simply fades away from there. I leans over the edge and watches the scene below me. They’ve heard it, too. The professor is standing on the rock, like a statue of “Science at Bay,” while the doctor gives an action picture of “Lard Leaving the Log,” and he left it backwards. He almost dried up the creek when he hit, and then the waters closed over him.

I heard Phinney squeak like a rusty wheel, when the doctor went out of sight, and then he lights running. D. F. are two of the initials the old boy wears after his name, and right now I argues that they stands for “Danged Fast.” The way he ambled out of there would keep an antelope busy to imitate, and he hung on to his blanket, too. I sees the doctor roll out on a sandbar below there, and head off into the brush after the professor, and I says to myself—

“You keep that up for a while, old-timer, and that adipose tissue won’t hamper you none to speak of.”

Then came the dogs. They comes down the creek, howling their heads off, and behind them is Mighty Jones and two other men. Them dogs starts milling around one spot down there, which is where the professor has been setting. All to once a dog breaks out of the pack and beats it for the creek, and some more follow him. Them dogs acts like they hadn’t had a drink for a week.

Mighty gets off his bronc and examines the place where the dogs got so excited, and pretty soon he holds up something in his hand.

“Pie!” he yells, and the rest of them comes up to examine it.

They tried to get the dogs to take up the trail, but all they will do is lap water and howl their fool heads off.

Finally they decides to dispense with the dogs, and when I sees them motion like they were coming my way, I pilgrims back to my bronc and takes a roundabout way home.

The three riders and the dogs are there when I arrives, and the old lady is right in her glory. She sure is peddling information to that bunch, and they looks hostile to me when I shows up. I walks up on the porch, after kicking a few dogs out of the way and faces them. One is Bill McFee, our sheriff, and the other is “Scenery” Sims, his deputy, and of course the third one is Mighty.

“Howdy, Bill,” says I. “How’s tricks?”

“Hunting for a little information, Ike,” says he. “Where’s Magpie?”

I looks them over, and feels foolish. It don’t pay to lie to the law, and it don’t pay to lose fifty-three dollars either. I clears my throat, and kicks another dog off the porch.

“Well,” says I, “Magpie he—he——”

“Don’t lie!” squeaks Scenery. “Don’t lie to us.”

“Anything you say may be used against you, Ike,” warns Bill.

I don’t like Scenery, and me and Bill never got to the kissing stage.

“Scenery,” says I, “some day I’m going to assassinate you.”

“Just like you did——”

“Whoa!” snorts Bill. “Don’t say that, Scenery. I want to know where Magpie Simpkins is.”

“Tellurium said—” begins Scenery, but Bill shuts him up.

“Never mind what anybody told you: I want a statement from Ike.”

“Tellurium said, did he?” says I. “I don’t know what he said, Bill, but I do know that he knows where Magpie is, and I promised that same Tellurium Woods that I wouldn’t tell. Sabe?”

“But the lady here said something about a bear,” whines Scenery. “She said——”

“Too much talk,” snaps Bill. “Mighty talks about wild men until the whole country is aroused, and then this here lady orates about bears that bray, and Tellurium wails about pie thieves. Danged place is getting too civilized. Reckon I’ll go up and talk with Tellurium. Come on, Scenery.”

They pilgrims away, and I sets down on the porch.

“We’re going away, too,” states Mrs. Professor, “I—I won’t stay here another night. We’ll go to Piperock and live at the hotel.”

“You got some riding animals, ma’am?” asks Mighty.

“Bureaus,” says the old lady. “We don’t know the way down there, but I’d rather be lost than to stay here.”

“I’ll escort you down,” offers Mighty, grinning at me. “Where are your riding-rigs?”

I don’t offer no information or help. What’s the use of arguing with a female? When they turns and waves at me from down the trail, I just throws away my cigaret and goes into the cabin. If they wants to interpret that gesture as a wave it’s up to them.

I hears somebody yelp outside, when I’m almost asleep, so I goes outside and shakes hands with “Old Testament” Tilton and his family. The old pelican is on another one of his pilgrimages after souls, and takes his wife and daughter along. They has a pack-outfit, and the old lady orates that she’d admire a chance to look at our stove.

“I’ve shed tears over a camp-fire so long that I hankers for a stove,” says she.

Mrs. Tilton looks like a relic of the Puritans and her daughter ain’t more than a jump behind her.

“Come on, Drusilla,” says she, “we’ll make some biscuits, while father quotes a few scriptures to Mr. Harper.”

“Ma’am,” says I, bowing low, “I’d rather see you making biscuits. I figure that there ain’t nothing better for a man’s soul than to see a pretty woman making biscuits.”

Maybe I stretched the beauty part a heap, but I’ve been corraled before by Old Testament, and I’d a heap rather add an extra lie to my already overload of sin than to stand for his line of talk. Old Testament pulls off his boots and lays down on a bunk, while the old lady digs into the flour. Miss Drusilla pokes her nose into a magazine, and I sets there and smokes. I’d just about forgot Magpie, when all to once I hears a noise at the door. There stands the professor.

Yes, thank you, he’s still got the blanket. He seems to have cut a hole in it for each leg to stick through, and there he stands, holding on to the corners of that blanket. He’s got a rope around his waist, but don’t seem to have much confidence in it.

The old boy seems to have lost his specs and most of his ambition, but he pilgrims right inside and throws one arm around Mrs. Tilton.

“My darling,” he gurgles, “I’m through. I find that the theory is all right but the practise is impossible. Were you worried?”

Old Testament sets up on the bunk and looks goggle-eyed at the old coot, but beyond the professor’s oration there ain’t a word spoken for several seconds.

Sudden-like the old lady tears away, and the next second sees the professor crowned with a pan of dough. Believe me, it was some coronation. He backs away, clawing the flour out of his eyes, and sets down on Drusilla’s lap.

He stares at the surroundings, foolish-like, and then he sort of sees things in their right light. Just then comes a delicate sort of a cough at the door, and we all turns.

I don’t know where the doctor made the raise, but he’d got a dirty saddle blanket draped around him, and a look of disgust on his face. He looks like nature had sure put him in bad humor.

“Lead us not into temptation,” I hears Old Testament say, and sees him reaching for the doctor’s shotgun.

The professor slips off Drusilla’s lap and makes a quick limp for the door.

“It’s all wrong, Doctor,” says he, through the dough. “It’s——”

I reckon the doctor thought the same about it, ’cause them two mismated cave men starts going away as fast as possible.

Old Testament clumps past me, and before I can stop him he bangs away with both barrels of that gun. I reckon the professor is so thin it would take a choke-bored gun to hit him at ten feet, but the doctor seems to go out of his way to hurdle a stump.

Old Testament picks himself up out of the dirt, and circles around and sets down on the porch. I reckon that gun was loaded by an anarchist.

“Heaven is my home!” exclaims Mrs. Tilton, leaning against the doorway, while Drusilla pants like a tired pup.

“Brother Harper, I’d admire to know what that was!” groans Old Testament, holding his head in his hands.

“Sounded like half a stick of dynamite in each barrel,” says I, and just then I turns and sees Mrs. Professor and Angeline, setting right there on their burros, looking at us.

Mrs. Professor tumbles off her noble steed, waddles right over and grabs Old Testament by the ear.

“You assassin!” she whoops. “What did you shoot at my Wallie for?”

“Your—madam, you’re hurting me!” squeaks the old man. “Let go my ear! I don’t know who Wallie is but I do know that one of them cannibals kissed my wife.”

“Kissed your wife?” wonders the old lady, and then she stares at Mrs. Tilton. “Well!” she gasps. “Wallie must have lost his glasses!”

Them four females acts like they belonged to the same club, and when nobody seems to want to make conversation, I speaks up and says—

“I thought you ladies were on your way to Piperock.”

“We were,” nods Mrs. Professor. “Our guide was behind us, and all at once he disappeared, so we came back.”

Bill McFee and Scenery Sims rides into the yard and sort of relieves the situation.

“Tellurium wasn’t home,” states Bill. “You get your hat, Ike, and come along with us. There’s something queer about this layout, if you asks me.”

“Amen,” says Old Testament, “wild and queer. Look! Who’s dead now?”

It was a queer outfit. Two calico broncs, without enough harness for one, hitched to an antiquated hearse. One black wooden plume still sways drunken-like from one corner; and the glass windows on the sides are so dirty and patched that you can’t see inside. It’s the equipage of old Runs-With-a-Wolf.

In order to make it a Winter vehicle, the old boy cut a hole under the seat to run his lines through so he can lie on his stummick and drive from inside. It looks like an orderly sort of a runaway—not having a visible driver, and the crowd splits as it swings around in front of the cabin and stops.

A high-pitched voice inside yells—

“Are you here?”

“Yes’m,” squeaks Scenery, blowing his nose like a trumpet. “Get right out and bury it. We’ve got a preacher.”

Yar-o-o-o-o! Woof! Yip! Kyoodle! Yar-o-o-o-o!

Maybe that don’t give much of an idea of the noise, but it’s as near as a human being can come to the noise them dogs make, as they string into the place, and right at their head comes a human being advertising the fact that he wears red underclothes and a desire to hit a tall place.

The fact that there’s ladies present don’t bother him at first, but when he gets nearer he shies around in front of that team of calico broncs with that bunch of howling mongrels at his heels. It don’t take them calicoes long to find out that they’re scared, and they immediate and soon forgets that they’re hitched to a sacred sedan.

It’s about six jumps to where two stumps stand about three feet apart, and it looks like them broncs have been used to going through gates, ’cause they hits square between them stumps. The hearse don’t go with them—not all of it. Runs-With-a-Wolf ain’t no mechanic, and his family equipage ain’t in the best of repair, so when she hits them stumps, the coupling pole breaks and the top and the hind wheels turn over once and stay put.

Them dogs are howling around and around the cabin, so I looks up and sees Mighty Jones’ face sticking over the edge.

“The murderer!” he yelps. “Sneaked up and hauled me off my bronc! Says: ‘Come to me, Sweet Marie!’ and then he swiped my clothes, and set my dogs on me!”

“My gosh!” explodes Bill. “This country don’t need a sheriff! It——”

“My darling, will you get my trousers?” asks a squeaky voice, and there is the professor’s head sticking out of the top of that hearse, where the plume used to be.

Sudden-like another board loosens up and the doctor’s face, like a rising moon, comes up. He stares all around at the ruin, and then up behind him appears the features of Runs-With-a-Wolf.

“Hyas cultus!” proclaims the old buck. “Wah! Haulum wild man no good! He-e-e-e-eap loco! Gettum fi’ dolla, losum hack! No good!”

“And in our trouser pocket you will find some money which you will please hand this noble red man as recompense for his services and damage,” continues the professor in his sing-song voice.

“Wallie-e-e-e! Are you all there?” shrieks Mrs. Professor.

“He is not!” snaps the doctor. “If he was all there he wouldn’t be in this predicament, madam. You women go in the house and hand out all the clothes in sight. If there’s an overcoat—hand it to me, ’cause I’m going to play safe. I can use gloves and some ear muffs, too.”

“The theory was sound,” sings the professor, “but the practise was insufferable. I’m going to take the lecture platform against hunting with hounds. I’m——”

But just then Ricky Henderson gallops in and pulls up beside Bill McFee. He sort of gawps at the busted hearse, and then says to Bill:

“They caught the wild man, Bill. The bunch borrowed Doughgod Smith’s bear dogs, and treed him over at the head of Sillman Gulch. It was Tellurium Woods!”

“My ——!” gasps Bill. “I’m going home! This is driving me wild, too. I came up here to find the body of Magpie Simpkins, and—well, what do you know about that!”

Here comes Magpie leading them calico broncs, and he’s grinning like he was a heap pleased. He grins at the busted hearse and at the three heads sticking out, and then turns to McFee—

“What kind of a circus are you trying to pull off in my yard, Bill?”

“Search me,” says Bill, weak-like. “You’re supposed to have been murdered, the woods are full of wild men who turns out to be Tellurium Woods; these here Jaspers goes riding in a hearse and bust up on a stump, and Mighty’s dogs tries to bite the hand what feeds them. It’s too much for one day, and—I’m going home.”

“Arrest him, Bill!” whoops Mighty, hopping up and down on the roof, “I demands his arrest for stealing my clothes! Make him take ’em off!”

“What clothes?” asks Magpie, grinning. “These ain’t your clothes.”

I recognizes Tellurium’s striped shirt and gray hat.

“Are you going to arrest him, Bill?” yelps Mighty, and Bill turns in his saddle.

“Mighty, you had him dead once today, and you sure caused me a lot of excitement. Shut up!” and he rides away.

We gets some clothes on the professor and doctor and loans Mighty an old pair of overalls. Old Testament and family leaves without any sort of a benediction, and the survivors sets down on the steps to tell each other how it was done. We just gets started when Tellurium Woods shows up. He’s sure got an assorted lot of clothes on, and he’s some mad. He stops in front of Magpie, and glares like he’d love to eat the whole Simpkins tribe.

“You long-complected cross between a lodge-pole and a burglar!” he howls. “You swiped my clothes! Can’t an honest man go in swimming without having his clothes stole? You told them fellers where to find me, too—dang your hide!”

“He took my clothes by force,” whines Mighty. “I never done nothing to him and——”

“Give me that two hundred dollars, Ike,” orders Tellurium. “She’s mine. Magpie didn’t stay the stated time, so I win.”

“So?” grins Magpie. “Don’t get hurried, Ike. Tellurium, do you remember a pie you baked a short time ago, and——”

“You stole it,” chuckles Tellurium. “You’d lose on that alone, Magpie. I’ll take that money and——”

“Pie?” asks the professor, “I—I stole a pie, and lost it. I don’t——”

“Wait,” grins Magpie. “When you filled that crust, Tellurium, you must have stuffed it regardless, ’cause inside I finds this here communication, which I presume was written by a party what is now present. I’ll read it to you.”

He hauls out a sticky-looking piece of paper, and clears his throat. Here’s what she says:

Chased him all day but didn’t catch him. If I don’t get him to give up tomorrow I’ll borrow Doughgod’s bear dogs. If I do you will have to give me twenty-five instead of fifteen dollars.

“How do you like that, Tellurium?” grins Magpie. “I thought that in our agreement we were to confine the knowledge to three of us.”

Tellurium looks blank-like at everybody, and then glares at Mighty.

“My gosh!” snorts Mighty. “Didn’t you get that note, Tellurium? You wasn’t home, so I stuck it under the top crust of that pie. I put it there so nobody but you would find it. You said for me to let you know about it.”

“Well, what do you think about it now?” grins Magpie.

“Think?” Tellurium scratches his bald-head for a moment. “Think? I ain’t thinking—no more. I know one thing; the next bet I make I don’t assist in no way. I’m going to let nature take her course.”

“Plenty coarse enough, too,” agrees the doctor, rubbing his hip.

“Yeaus, of course,” agrees the professor.

“Naturally,” says Magpie.